i carry your heart with me(i carry it in

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go, my dear;and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

--e.e. Cummings (American, 1894-1962)

from The Love Poems of Marichiko

You ask me what I thought about
Before we were lovers.
The answer is easy.
Before I met you
I didn't have anything to think about.

Who is there? Me.
Me who? I am me. You are you.
You take my pronoun,
And we are us.

Love me. At this moment we
Are the happiest
People in the world.

--Marichiko (Kenneth Rexroth) (American, 1905-1982)

The Saint's First Wife Said

I woke to your face not looking at me
but at the bird that settled on your wrist,
lured by food. Its trust, for once, was rewarded.
You offered the bird everything you had.

I remember. That is how it began
with us: You held out your hand; I took it.

--G. E. Patterson (American, b. 1960)

I Remember

By the first of August
the invisible beetles began
to snore and the grass was
as tough as hem and was
no color -- no more than
the sand was a color and
we had worn our bare feet
bare since the twentieth
of June and there were times
we forgot to wind up your
alarm clock and some nights
we took our gin warm and neat
from old jelly glasses while
the sun blew out of sight
like a red picture hat and
one day i tied my hair back
with a ribbon and you said
that i looked almost like
a puritan lady and what
I remember best is that
the door to your room was
the door to mine.

--Anne Sexton (American, 1928-1974)